Just before the kick-off of the Ligue 1 Rennes-Troyes match, the players and the public of a full Roazhon Park stadium observed a time of applause, while the screens broadcast a photo of the 32-year-old journalist.
"With courage and commitment, he has never ceased to inform as many people as possible of the reality of a conflict," announced the club's speaker. "Passionate about football and loyal supporter of the Rouge et Noir, he wore our colours between 2006 and 2008".
Born in Sarajevo, Arman Soldin arrived as a child in France to escape the war and was remembered in Rennes as a brilliant student and a football enthusiast.
He never stopped kicking the ball. When he started at AFP in 2015 as an intern in the Rome bureau, he joined colleagues who met one evening a week in the field, but also played with migrants during a report in Lampedusa.
The players applaud in tribute to Arman Soldin, an AFP journalist killed in Ukraine and who wore the red and black colors as a teenager, on May 14, 2023 in Rennes © Sebastien SALOM-GOMIS / AFP
Hired at AFP in London, he had also become a sports correspondent for Canal+ from 2019.
He had kept this cap even after becoming AFP video coordinator in Kiev last autumn, and found it with pleasure and lightness during his rest periods in London.
The Stade Rennais pays tribute to Arman Soldin, an AFP journalist killed in Ukraine and who wore the red and black colors as a teenager, on May 14, 2023 in Rennes © Sebastien SALOM-GOMIS / AFP
And even in England, he had kept a particular attachment to Stade Rennais. On his Twitter account, a video from September 2021 shows him in the press box at Tottenham Stadium, one eye on the field and the other on a Marseille-Rennes match on his tablet.
© 2023 AFP